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Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Late Summer First Impressions - Part 2

Tokyo ESP

When you utilize “In media res”, you’re starting your story
in the middle, or often the climax. You’re throwing the viewer right into the
action, giving them a quick taste of what’s to come in hopes of hooking their
attention and, like all forms of techniques to bait the audience, can often be
a successful way of doing so. For example, Chuck Palahniuk puts this method to
use quite often in his novels as a clever way of keeping the reader wondering
just how point A results to what we saw of point B.

When Fight Club,
Palahniuk’s most notable work, begins with the narrator, tied up and gun shoved
inside his mouth, listening to how the perpetrator has rigged numerous
buildings with vans chocked full of explosives, a more compelling narrative is
constructed. A darker, edgier perspective is put into place and the scope of
the consequences has become clearer. Palahniuk’s use of “in media res” gives
the story a more effective off-kilter atmosphere from the get-go.

More and more use of this technique has been seen in today’s
media that it often becomes cheap. An uninspired way to keep people invested.
One example that comes off the top of my mind is Dreamwork’s Megamind. Main character is falling to his
death in slow-motion and before the collision, the film winds back to explain
how we got to that point. Don’t get me wrong, I quite like the film, but there
really is no point to its “in media res”. If the film’s biggest focus was how
the super villian becomes the super hero then how does watching him fall to his
death put anything in significant perspective? However, Megamind understood its use of “in media res” regardless that it
was without any real necessity. It’s not clever, but it does its job right; it
works as a hook.

Tokyo ESP is
clueless as to what an “in media res” is. First off, I was surprised by how
seriously the episode took itself, because the manga certainly never took
itself this seriously. It was light-hearted, quirky and comedic for the most
part. And since the adaptation is going to wind back to the very beginning of
the story next episode, I can only make a pretty certain assumption that the
episode will be light-hearted, quirky and comedic. So why bother with an “in
media res” when the tones are so dichotomous? Using the technique only achieves
a jarring shift.

Second, and most importantly, by using “in media res”, when Tokyo ESP throws us into the action, it
should stay focused on the god damn action. At first, Tokyo ESP seems to kinda understand what it’s doing. A band of
crazy espers start their rampage on humanity in order to bring them to their
knees. Amidst the destruction, the city people wonder where the white-haired
girl could be. And though there are certainly a lot of flaws, it would have
been a decent use of “in media res”. When the series winds back to the very
beginning of things, we can wonder just how a typical high-school girl
eventually became the city’s vigilante. We can wonder what might have driven
the espers to do what they’re doing. But instead of keeping things short, this
technique goes on for the full episode and that’s when things begin to lose
focus.

Suddenly, the series is focusing on various plot points that
don’t make a lick of sense, spotlighting side characters we’ve never met and
treating them as if the viewer should give a damn. There’s a real phony scene,
in which the mother of one of these side characters is captured by a baddie, that's treated with so much weight as if to tug on our heartstrings or some shit. It’s
stupid.

I guess I shouldn’t be flipping my shit until the next
episode, but this first episode waves up too many red flags...

...but fuck! the
white-haired girl doesn’t even look right!

Ao Haru Ride

Individually, our two lead characters are much more
thought-out than I anticipated. I expected the run-of-the-mill archetypes and,
though they are to an extent, they’re already holding a lot of potential in
terms of developing into thoughtful, multi-faceted people. The series pushes
the envelope by rightfully treating Mabuchi’s “I’m an asshole” personality as a
facade he puts on as an attempt to hide past trauma rather than some sexy
enigmatic factor.

Futaba works as an internally conflicted character.
Desperate to render herself as unattractive as possible, specifically to males,
yet is clingy deep down, drawn to Mabuchi and certainly desperate to get his
attention.

It’s just such a shame that, with too potentially compelling
character, the series drowns itself in too much cheese. It forced chemistry too
much in the episode and relied on too many stupid contrivances.

The initial back-story in which Futaba and Mabuchi - named
Tanaka at the time as his parents weren’t divorced - recounts how both were
soft-spoken and reserved in middle school. The two took a liking to each other
and Mabuchi eventually musters the courage to ask her out to a night festival.
Of course, this doesn’t go unnoticed by other classmates and later in the day a
male student pesters Futaba if the two are dating. In response, she angrily
whips around and shouts that she despises all boys. Mabuchi happens to be
present when she shouts this, is offended and ditches Futaba at night. It’s an
interesting back-story too rushed; Futaba’s outburst too abrupt and too
befuddling at the moment. Then there’s another moment (now in the future) where
Futaba, who hasn’t made contact in a while, confronts Mabuchi after discovering
he attends her high school and, as the two relay past events, ridiculous visual
gimmicks assault the scene. The backdrop fades into your cliché bright light while
flower pedals swirl around them dramatically. How subtle.

Though, the worst contrivance comes near the end of the
episode when Futaba is buying bread from the school store. Two woman run the
thing, Futaba pays one of them while the other is off in the back doing
whatever. However, the store is outta bags so the woman, Futaba pays, takes off
to replace them while the other woman comes up to the front. As Futaba leaves,
this replacement mistakes Futaba for stealing. She pulls her back, embarrassing
her by assuming her a thief. But, oh boy, oh boy! Our shining prince in armor
happens to be at the scene of the assumed crime and reassures the woman that
Futaba did (and also calling her an old hag. Ok?) It’s eye-rollingly stupid as
is, but just to get confirmation, Mabuchi asks the woman Futaba paid, who turns
out to be no more than a few feet away and in earshot of the whole thing! I
mean, come on! Could the pesky woman not have asked for confirmation herself.
Could Futaba not have asked?

Following that scene, Futaba runs after Mabuchi, they
discuss how they’ve changed ever since the incident in middle school and the
whole thing, regardless that it’s standard fare, comes off naturally in
strengthening the character’s relationships. Again, it’s such a shame that the
series resorts to so much forced contrivance when it did prove to spark
chemistry between our characters without the blatantly strained effort. Oh
well, we’ll see how things play out later on.

Quickies:

I plan on writing up some mid-series impression for Terror
of Resonance, Nozaki-Kun and Aldnoah.Zero, the only other series I’ve found
interesting enough to keep up with right now. For now, I’ll just give the gist
of what I think of each series. Terror of Resonance had one fantastic first
episode. I love it when a work of fiction doesn’t hold your hand, letting the
viewer slowly realize the resolutions to their answers by themselves as the story
progresses, all while keeping a coherent narrative to keep things pleasantly
interesting. DRAMAtical Murder tries to recreate the same thing, but its
structure is so chaotic, trying to piece together the puzzle is irritating as
hell, as well as dull.

Aldnoah.Zero is rubbing me off the wrong way like most
Urobuchi series, but I feel compelled to see just what "The Butcher" might pull out next. Nozaki-kun isn’t anything special, but it’s a decent little comedy to kill some
time with. Anyway, I wanted to get this post out last week but a funeral came
up and that definitely jostled my planned schedule a bit.

19 comments:

I didn't like Tokyo ESP too, with the same flaws you've mentioned here. The general idea of espers is kind of interesting, but the way it has been executed is something I didn't like about Tokyo ESP. And I'm not a fan of the characters too. I don't think I'll be giving it more episodes to know if I should drop it or not.

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